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NEW DELHI: Seeking to replace the country’s 30-year-old national forest policy, the Centre has come out with a new draft policy which calls for promoting urban greens, public private partnership models for afforestation, strengthening forest fire prevention measures and plantations in catchment areas to rejuvenate water bodies among many proposals to protect India’s green cover.

The draft National Forest Policy (NFP) 2018, released by the environment ministry on Wednesday for stakeholders’ comments and suggestions within a month, also takes into account the role of forest in addressing the challenge of climate change.

It seeks to sync it with the country’s forestry-related ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ targets under the Paris Agreement where India has promised to rapidly increase its forest cover so that an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent is created by the year 2030.

The ministry argued that though the NFP of 1988 had been instrumental in increasing forest and tree cover and also in reducing diversion of forest for other land uses despite compelling demands from the increasing population, a new policy is needed to face new challenges of climate change, human-wildlife conflict, intensifying water crisis, increasing air and water pollution and deteriorating environment.

Environmentalists, however, found certain critical gaps in it. “The draft NFP 2018 mentions major forestry issues ailing the forest sector, but it doesn’t provide answers to them as to how these objectives will be achieved considering the competitive demands for forestlands. It’s worth noting here that most of the objectives mentioned in earlier 1988 policy have not been met so far,” said Ajay Kumar Saxena, expert on forestry issues of the

Though the draft recognises role of forests as climate change mitigation factor, it remains vague on the issue of forests rights for forest dwelling communities. It, however, proposes launching of a national

Earlier, the ministry had brought a draft in June, 2016 but it was later withdrawn after criticism on its various provisions and also for ignoring a key forest related law - the FRA. The new draft, however, takes care of it, and also emphasises on ensuring “synergy” between ‘

“As far as community forest resources management under FRA is concerned, the new policy will address the same under participatory forest management and the same will be addressed through the proposed community forest management mission,” the policy document says,” says the draft NFP, 2018.

Saxena, however, noted that that draft mentioned the FRA only at one place and that too in conjunction with the proposed community forest management mission.

“This is quite disheartening as FRA is a major movement in forest areas at present and its progress has been very lackadaisical over a decade of its implementation in India”, he said while asking the ministry to amend the draft suitably to incorporate existing imperatives of FRA – which is a powerful legislation transforming the forest-community interface in the country.

The new national forest policy will be released by the government after examining comments and suggestion of stakeholders who are supposed to extend their written submissions to the ministry by April 14.

The draft says, “The overall objective and goal of the present policy is to safeguard the ecological and livelihood security of people, of the present and future generations, based on sustainable management of the forests for the flow of ecosystem services”.

On promoting urban greens which include woodlands, wetlands, parks, wood in institutional areas, gardens, avenue plantations and block plantations, the draft says, “They need to be managed as urban forest ecosystems to enhance optimal urban forest cover and to nurture and sustain urban health, clean air and related benefits”.

It says the management plans for urban green will be prepared and implemented in consonance with the development plan of cities.

The draft policy also talks about the need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector. It says, “This sector being labour intensive can help in increasing green jobs. Forest corporations and industrial units need to step up growing of industrial plantations for meeting the demand of raw materials.”

Pitching for appropriate laws, rules and regulations for effective implementation of the new policy, the draft also asks for setting up a ‘

’ headed by environment and forest minister and ‘State Boards of Forestry’ headed by state minister in-charge of forests for conflict resolution and periodic review.

Saxena, however, believes that a lot need to be changed in the draft before the ministry comes out with a final policy. He said, “The draft policy fails to mention or address the degradation of growing stock in the natural forests.”

(FSI) reports that there have been consistent decline in the ‘Moderately Dense Forest’ category and enhancement of forest cover in ‘Open Forest’ and ‘Scrub’ categories. “This negative correlation means that India is losing good forests for developmental pressures, forest degradation and climate change”, said Saxena.

SALIENT FEATURES OF DRAFT NATIONAL FOREST POLICY, 2018

1. Public private participation for afforestation in degraded forest areas